Veeam Zip Slip Vulnerability and Patch

For those heard about this vulnerability, it may impact those using guest processing in Veeam with indexing enabled. Veeam have issued a patch which you can download from this KB. Note that if you’re already on 9.5a (which brings support for vSphere 6.5 U2 and vSphere 6.7) that you are protected.

Timekeeping within ESXi

It’s hard to overstate the importance of proper timekeeping inside your data center, and this is a subject which is far often overlooked which can cause huge problems. There was recently a blog published on VMware’s blog pagewhich dives into this for ESXi. It’s a great read and we recommend it highly.

End of Availability for vRealize Log Insight for vCenter

Really disappointed to see this disappear.VMware have decided that, past the current vRLI release of 4.6, customers will no longer get the 25 OSI entitlement to use Log Insight by virtue of having a vCenter license key. For those not aware, up to this point and for the past couple of years, if you owned vCenter Server it also included an entitlement for you to deploy and use Log Insight for 25 OSIs. This meant your hosts, vCenter, and anything running on top could send logs over to vRLI. Not entirely sure of the reasoning but if you own vCenter, haven’t deployed vRLI, you may want to get on the ball. You can at least determine if having vRLI in your environment is something beneficial (and we think it is). FAQ in a KB article is here.

Hotfix 3 for vRealize Automation 7.4

If you’re running vRA 7.4, you may or may not have run into a few issues regardless of whether you upgraded from a prior version or started fresh. Some of these symptoms include missing schema in certain EBS states, warnings of duplicate properties, directory sync stops working, and others. If you seem to be having some of these issues, there is Hotfix 3 available for vRA 7.4 which bundles many of these fixes into one (huge) patch. Contact GSS for the fix to be sure you are affected by it. If you are and if you apply it, remember to follow instructions and SNAPSHOT everything!

New book: VMware vSphere 6.7 Clustering Deepdive

A follow-up to the smash hit from Epping and Denneman comes the vSphere 6.7 edition of Clustering Deepdive. Note that this is *not* an introductory read into many of the common technologies within vSphere but a very technical one. If you deal in vSphere on a daily basis, this is highly recommended to put on your shelf and read.

vROps CLI from Blue Medora

This was really something cool to see. Blue Medora have apparently created a CLI for interacting with vROps. Although there are PowerCLI cmdlets which can do some of this, it looks like they rolled their own from the API and so allows for more functionality. Blog post herethat describes it and provides links.

VMware Lab Solution

I am sure every VMware admin has said to themselves, “I wish I had a lab to test this in!” This comes up a lot because we see so many customers that do not have a dedicated lab for testing product installation, maintenance, and upgrades. A lab is highly recommended because it gives you the confidence needed to successfully complete the project in a production environment.

If you do not have one readily available, then have a look at vmlabs. They have environments starting with as little as $10/day for 3 hosts with Enterprise Plus, vSAN, and NSX.